Word

The opening verses of the Gospel of John — 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made' (John 1:1-3) — present the incarnate Christ as the eternal divine Logos or Word. The term logos carries rich resonances in both Jewish and Greek intellectual traditions. In OT and Jewish thought: the 'word of the LORD' (dabar YHWH) was the agent of creation (Ps. 33:6; Gen. 1 — 'God said...'), divine revelation, and prophetic address; the Aramaic memra ('word') of the Targums functioned as a reverential circumlocution for divine action; and the personified Wisdom of Proverbs 8 described an agent present at creation. In Greek philosophical tradition (especially Stoicism and Middle Platonism, developed by Philo of Alexandria in the Jewish Hellenistic synthesis), the logos was the rational principle ordering the universe and mediating between transcendent God and material world.

John's prologue uses the Logos title to engage both contexts while transcending both: the Logos is not an abstract principle or emanation but a personal being who 'was with God' in eternal relational distinction and who 'was God' in essential identity, and who 'became flesh and made his dwelling among us' in the specific historical person of Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14). The Logos Christology of the prologue has been foundational for all subsequent Trinitarian theology: it provides the basic grammar for speaking of the Son as both distinct from the Father and one with him in being. 1 John 1:1 identifies the Word as one 'which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched' — grounding the eternal Logos in concrete historical embodiment. Revelation 19:13 applies the title to the returning Christ: 'his name is the Word of God,' completing the Johannine identification of Jesus with the divine Word from eternity to eschaton.